Meanwhile, big corporations have fallen since adopting NAFTA, because they were forced to compete, and couldn’t keep pace with the world economy.

Of the top 100 economies in the world,

Dude, I could seriously slap you for how much you just obfuscated with this. Not cool.

Or did you honestly, and completely not grok what I said here?

There were large companies that failed, because they couldn’t compete with overseas competition.

I’m not talking about if any companies out there grew, I mean companies which were big names in the 1980s, failed, because they had an artificial advantage that was taken from them. Law, not economics, propped them up.

The main rewards go to American shareholders and workers. Apple’s profit amounts to about 30% of the sales price. Product design, software development and marketing are based in America. Add in the profits and wages of American suppliers, and distribution and retail costs, and America retains about half the total value of an iPad sold there. The next biggest gainers are South Korean firms like Samsung and LG, which provide the display and memory chips, whose profits account for 7% of an iPad’s value. The main financial benefit to China is wages paid to workers for assembling the product and for manufacturing some inputs—equivalent to only 2% of the retail price.

This sinks your entire argument CWolf. Production & value of the Ipad, just like most other goods you want to talk about, disproportionately goes to us, yet because Chinese labor was involved, all of it is counted as foreign production instead by GDP.

It’s an artifact of the statistic you allude to, not a reflection of the economic reality, which when we look at, shows we’re making serious bank, and increasing our own production.

Economics, works. Go figure.

You showed how Chinese companies are increasingly buying up domestic land

Which Japan was doing in the 1980s, but this is actually the spotlight fallacy.

If you are talking about “rates”, then SAY so from the outset and make it clear that Switzerland is “accepting” about 4K immigrants annually. Big Deal. There are probably 4K more deaths than births of native Swiss.

This is a list of countries by net migration rate, the difference between the number of persons entering and leaving a country during the year, per 1,000 persons (based on midyear population). An excess of persons entering the country is referred to as net immigration (e.g., 3.56 migrants/1,000 population); an excess of persons leaving the country as net emigration (e.g., -9.26 migrants/1,000 population). The net migration rate indicates the contribution of migration to the overall level of pop...

Switzerland over a 5 Year period received 47.80 people per 1,000 in net migration.

Dude, I could seriously slap you for how much you just obfuscated with this. Not cool.

Or did you honestly, and completely not grok what I said here?

There were large companies that failed, because they couldn’t compete with overseas competition.

The big companies are getting bigger. The fact that a few of them failed, or were simply acquired by even bigger companies doesn’t change the trend. If your point was “A large company is still capable of failing” yes, of course. I don’t even know why you’d make that point.

Your reply only makes sense if it was saying big companies did worse under NAFTA. If you were saying “Big companies were the primary beneficiary of NAFTA, but it didn’t make them invulnerable!” sure we agree. But I don’t know why you were knocking down an objection that no one has ever made.

Any big company can still fail, but our trade policy is designed to benefit large international businesses at the expense of smaller domestic businesses. That is my objection. It’s not even the big companies getting bigger. My objection is the loss of the domestic production. We’ve had a stagnant standard of living for 40 years thanks to these trade deals.

ERITREAN migrants claiming asylum in Switzerland are using their welfare benefits to travel back to the danger zones they have previously fled to take a holiday.

We must give them welfare so they can vacation in their home countries they fled for fear of death. Perhaps they were afraid of working to death?

Let’s be more like Switzerland! AS has some numbers that say that migrants taking welfare leads to HUGE economic growth. That’s why every town you’ve ever been to that’s more than 1/4 immigrant is a really nice area and overflowing with a bright future.

That is my objection. It’s not even the big companies getting bigger. My objection is the loss of the domestic production. We’ve had a stagnant standard of living for 40 years thanks to these trade deals.

Won’t be stagnant any more. Price of steel’s gone up. Prices of downstream goods are going to go up next. This will create downward pressure on our standard of living. The only question I have left is whether tax cuts and easing of other regulations will mitigate it and make things a wash for Americans.

And we have domestic economic production, lots of it. Wasn’t China that knocked it down in the past decade. It was a different socialist policy (as opposed to protectionism), free housing and loans and companies that are too big to fail and accept the results of their risky behavior in a free market with politicians who aid and abet them with domestic policy.

Dude, I could seriously slap you for how much you just obfuscated with this. Not cool.

Or did you honestly, and completely not grok what I said here?

There were large companies that failed, because they couldn’t compete with overseas competition.

The big companies are getting bigger.

While others, like Compaq, like Bethlehem Steel died, and they died, because they were fragile.

Because their arrangements, no longer reflected what made value.

The fact that the economy, as an imperitive, must constantly renew itself, is part of what makes protectionist ideas so problematic.

You don’t know if what you’re protecting, is something that is supposed to die.

Businesses can be lemons, entire organizations can be so wrongly oriented, that no amount of change in management or composition can fix it.

Or they can just be so very poor at adapting new paradigms in their industry, that they never catch back up.

And when you have just a handful of oligarchs occupying that industry to begin with, that means their failure ushers in a sea change.

Their failure results in 1,000s, if not 10s of 1,000s being displaced. Yet still, it doesn’t make it any less necessary, because we know what happens when you don’t allow this. And it’s far worse.

Any big company can still fail, but our trade policy is designed to benefit large international businesses

No, it’s our regulation atmosphere. Regulation by its very nature serves large interest in the market. Their costs accrue, disproportionally to small businesses, while large ones get an advantage, because they can merge, they can have costly legal staffs to advocate for themselves, or argue a point, and hire lobbyists who will get them a seat at the table for writing those rules.

Trade, meanwhile, has been an equalizer, where small businesses can leverage capital to do things they otherwise couldn’t. Things only big businesses could do in the past.

When I can order intricate machinery, off my phone, from a dealer in China, without all the complicated middlemen and red tape that typiified large corporate-style logistics, that’s a win for the common man, not a loss.

It means starts ups become more common, and that’s what you need in order to experience renewal. To build & have a future.

My objection is the loss of the domestic production.

You know what was actually lost Cwolf, you can’t put this realization off. You just admitted to it not too long ago, when you told me that clothing hanger production wasn’t part of the Plan.

Low value, low margin manufacturing, that poor places just getting industrialized around the world can easily handle. We don’t have any need to hold onto that, and we shouldn’t be writing laws to try.

It’s short sighted, and puts places in this country in stasis.

The truth is, manufacturing never dropped in America; we simply moved to producing more durable, high quality, high margin goods, and automation turned 10,000 member factories into ones that can be staffed with less than 200.

That’s the reality. “Domestic production” never stopped growing, and is where it should be. What production did die, was supposed to die, because it represented an earlier time & place, when America was less developed, and was more like the places that have largely taken that low value manufacturing over.

We must give them welfare so they can vacation in their home countries they fled for fear of death. Perhaps they were afraid of working to death?

Let’s be more like Switzerland! AS has some numbers that say that migrants taking welfare leads to HUGE economic growth.

Dude, the point is; Switzerland is stable, and not fragmenting. If immigration had the effect you were arguing, it should be clearly obvious to see in a country far smaller than us, experiencing a proportionally larger wave of people.

Everything sociologically would be happening more quickly.

The entire problem with your argument, is the lack of case study. You’re insisting that past experience doesn’t apply, and that were living in something different.

But I’m not finding that. I’m finding the same trends we’ve experienced for centuries on this matter.

I think your objections stem from you not knowing what is normal in immigration, because you bought into rose-tinted visions of what past immigration was like. When current immigrants offer troubel, you treat it as abnormal, because you didn’t know if it was somehow apart of the process. You’ve never really looked back, or compared the experience.

If you’re insisting this is different, then I’m going to have to ask that you do more to differentiate it.

While others, like Compaq, like Bethlehem Steel died, and they died, because they were fragile.

Compaq merged with HP. HP is literally on that top 100 biggest economies in the world list.

Alaska_Slim:

You don’t know if what you’re protecting, is something that is supposed to die.

I am very much aware that many elements of the American economy have been marked for death by the CoC and it’s cohorts. That suffocation has been an on-going process for nearly 40 years, and was ramped up greatly in the last 20 years.

We really are on the precipice of falling into your ideal world of 19th century robber barons and company towns. I don’t in any way lack clarity on that issue. It’s on the horizon and if we’d had 8 years of Clinton and the CoC’s vision of free trade, it may have been too much to bring back. Though it will take another 20 years to fully set in. Trump probably wasn’t the last president to have a shot at bringing back growth in the middle class, but he’s the last one who will have a good shot at it.

Alaska_Slim:

Trade, meanwhile, has been an equalizer, where small businesses can leverage capital to do things they otherwise couldn’t. Things only big businesses could do in the past.

When I can order intricate machinery, off my phone, from a dealer in China, without all the complicated middlemen and red tape that typiified large corporate-style logistics, that’s a win for the common man, not a loss.

This is why your entire premise if flawed. You’re arguing that we have too many domestic regulations on domestic industry, and therefore we need to be able to go over seas to get things not under regulatory bodies.

What makes 10x more sense is simply removing the domestic regulations, rather than divestment from the American economy.

Alaska_Slim:

Switzerland is stable, and not fragmenting. If immigration had the effect you were arguing, it should be clearly obvious to see in a country far smaller than us, experiencing a proportionally larger wave of people.

The four main countries of Swiss immigration are Germany, Portugal, France, and Italy. That makes up 1/2 of their immigrants. The median Swiss immigrant before 2010 had a college degree and was wealthier than the median native Swiss citizen.

So I’m not sure what your point is with the “25%” thing. The recent wave of welfare recipient Africans make up less than 10% of their population. And it’s been so problematic in the country, that they just voted in a far Right-wing government that’s putting up vastly stricter immigration laws.OneNewsNow.com

Asylum seekers and migrants who have received welfare over the past three years will no longer be granted citizenship in Switzerland – unless they pay the state back.

I’ve never objected to “immigration”. I’ve repeatedly made it plain that I object to bringing in unskilled migrants from backwards cultures. It seems even your example country agrees with me, and not you.

Won’t be stagnant any more. Price of steel’s gone up. Prices of downstream goods are going to go up next.

Yeah, that tariff 2 weeks ago on a few tiny steel contributors not only raised steel prices but also caused fuel, food, lumber, plastic, gypsum, asphalt and aggregate prices to inflate even more!

Or… Maybe… Correlation only equals causation when it will be convenient for an argument.

Steel leaving China 2 weeks ago has not even reached a U.S. port yet, but has already caused blanket inflation across the economy?

I am glad to know this since I was under the mistaken impression that the barrel price of crude oil which is directly tied to every Market at every stage was the reason for the blanket inflation we have now; now that I know it was a 2 week old tariff on minor market importers of one item I will wipe the egg off my face.

While others, like Compaq, like Bethlehem Steel died, and they died, because they were fragile.

Compaq merged with HP.

? Uh, Yeah, after losing tons of market share, and basically being shuttered. Their stock value dropped by more than half in a single year, and they weren’t reporting a profit most quarters in their last 5 years or so of operation.

You’re not avoiding the issue at all. An ailing business got bought out by one that managed to keep itself upright.

Alaska_Slim:

You don’t know if what you’re protecting, is something that is supposed to die.

I am very much aware that many elements of the American economy have been marked for death by the CoC and it’s cohorts. That suffocation has been an on-going process for nearly 40 years, and was ramped up greatly in the last 20 years.

So was the concession on coat hangers you made earlier just for show? Do you honestly not get why low margin manufacturing, which I’ll remind is the very cheap consumables you tried to indict imports on not too long ago, is not something to chase after?

Alaska_Slim:

Trade, meanwhile, has been an equalizer, where small businesses can leverage capital to do things they otherwise couldn’t. Things only big businesses could do in the past.

When I can order intricate machinery, off my phone, from a dealer in China, without all the complicated middlemen and red tape that typiified large corporate-style logistics, that’s a win for the common man, not a loss.

This is why your entire premise if flawed. You’re arguing that we have too many domestic regulations on domestic industry, and therefore we need to be able to go over seas to get things not under regulatory bodies.

No actually, that is not my point. I’m saying we held our own rural areas in stasis, and made them artificially weak; unable to renew themselves.

We blocked them from gaining financial capital, we gave (or more to the point, lead) them to poor education, and we don’t allow foreign companies, looking for affordable access points to our markets, to come here and set up factories at the rate they could be, which would save many of these towns from the blight they’re experiencing.

Let these foreigners create the same rise in circumstance that, say, Nike did in Vietnam? No, why would we allow that?

It’s no wonder that small towns complain when the one business interest they have goes under. We robbed them of the capability to do anything else, or to even try anything else.

Case in point; coal. Trump’s obsession with it, doesn’t make sense. It makes sense to transition to natural gas, it’s more cost effective. It makes our economy more productive.

It’s a wholly domestic microcosm, of what you’re doing more generally with trade. We hold onto it because it’s all certain folks know; a reality for them, because we basically suppressed anything else they could have done.

I’ve never objected to “immigration”. I’ve repeatedly made it plain that I object to bringing in unskilled migrants from backwards cultures.

And the problem is, unksilled immigration has. a. point.

Because it’s also what you call generalized labor, labor that’s going to fill broad roles, not just specialized niches.

You need migrancy, you need populations of people who don’t put down roots, and just move from town to town. This helps our economy.

You also need people going to counties that have been depopulated for decades, and need the manpower. This helps our economy, and ensures more high skilled, higher paying work can exist elsewhere in our economy.

It’s a two way street when it comes to labor, that’s what you keep overlooking here.

I admit, I used to be on the other side of this myself, but a story on carpenters in New York is what finally pointed out the reality to me, that the division of labor, makes generalized labor necessary. It lets the specialized labor, specialize more often, and do more of what they’re good at.